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YouTube SEO - How to optimize YouTube Video

Search Engine Optimization31 December 2017

There are many YouTube SEO experts and plenty of SEO tips and videos.
And I know you must have watched all those videos and tips to optimize
your YouTube videos. Most of us want to get more views and rank in the
YouTube. Therefore, many of us have tried same old key words, video
length, introductions, tags and more. But, the question is by doing all
those, have you managed to rank in the YouTube? Most of you will say ‘No’ as the answer.
This is what I found recently and it works. There are nine
powerful tips that you can follow to rank YouTube channel.

Colour Selection For A Website

1. Front-Load Your Keyword

Every one of you knows that you should use your target keyword or words
in the title. What you might not know is that YouTube put more weights
on that appear in the beginning of the title. Let see the example below.
If you use the target keyword at the beginning of the title and then you
can make it more SEO friendly. This is call front-loading keyword.

2. Boost Video Engagement Signals

Have you ever though what makes certain videos rank higher than others.
The videos with lots of engagement signals are tent to rank higher than
other videos. Engagement signals are things like shares, likes, comments
and subscribes. Basically, whenever someone engages with your video it
tells YouTube that people love this video. The researches states that
comments co-related with ranking more than any other engagement signals.
The question is how can you get more people to comments on your videos?
Putting a hyper-specific call to action (CTA) at the end of the video
works best to get more comments for your video.

Strong Video Engagement Signals

3. Use The Tab Formula For Video Tags

Here is the deal with the video tags on YouTube Channel. According
to ranking factor study as important as it used to be. That means
tags still make a difference. So, it is worthwhile to spend some time
on them. Unfortunately, most people on YouTube use the tags completely
wrong. Video tags are designed to help YouTube understand the content
of your video. This means, you do not need lots of tags to get the
job done. If you use so many tags and YouTube has no idea what is your
video about. If you put different tags in different topics, YouTube
cannot identify the exact matching keyword to rank your video. And if
YouTube does not understand what your video is about, they are not going
to rank the video for sure. Use of so many tags with different topics, you
can confuse both YouTube and Google

It is recommended to use small number of highly specific tags. Follow the TAB formula. It stands for,

T- Target

A- Alternatives

B- Broad

The first tag should be target keyword. Just like with your title,
YouTube put more weight on tags that appear earlier on. The nest two
to three keywords should be the alternatives of your target keyword. So find
some variations of your main keyword. Type the main keyword in the YouTube
search bar and sees what it is suggested.

4. CTR Magnet Thumbnails

You probably already know that click through rate is important
YouTube ranking factor. In other words if your video gets above
average amount of the clicks, YouTube is going to give your video
a higher rank. So, how can we get more clicks? Use CTR magnet thumbnails.
CTR magnet thumbnails are thumbnails strategically design to get more clicks from YouTube searchers.

• Use Non-YouTube Colors in Your Thumbnail

What does it mean? The main colors on YouTube are White,
Red and Black. So, if you use the same colors on your thumbnail,
you will blend in. Instead, use the colors that contrast with YouTube
color scheme like Green, Blue, Purple, Gray and Orange. If you use
those colors as thumbnails, your video can stand out from others
and help to get more clicks.

• Use Big Bold Text in Your Thumbnail

Thumbnails with text get more clicks than thumbnails without
any text. But, you do not have lot of space to work with.
Therefore, it is recommended that to use maximum 30 characters.

5. Write Mini Blog Posts For Your Video Description

Most people normally do not care about the description of the video.
But, the long description strategy has proven that it helps videos
to rank in YouTube. Because, longer description helps YouTube better
understand what your video is all about. So, write a long description
about your video with 150 to 200 words. What you want to outline the
content of the video without giving out the form. And do not write
needy details in the description. In that way if someone read the description,
they still need to watch the video to get the details.

6. Boost Video Length

When it’s come to YouTube SEO, what makes better. Long video
or short videos. Well, most of the longer videos tend to outrank
short videos. If you analyze the videos, you will see that the average
length of the videos is 14:50. Few years ago YouTube stated that
they focus on the videos that increase the amount of the time that
the viewers will spend watching videos on YouTube. In other words,
YouTube loves videos that keep people watching for long period of time.
The tip is to make the videos between 8 to 15 minutes long.

7. Use Brackets and Parentheses in Your Video Title

Like mentioned above, YouTube uses click through rate as a ranking factor.
Your thumbnail is a big part of the equation. But, do not forget about
the title. It is huge. Infect, YouTube themselves state that well written
title can be the difference between someone watching and sharing your
video or scrolling right pass it. And one of the easiest ways to increase
your click through rate is that add brackets and parentheses to your video title.
The study commission by Hubspot discover that by simply adding brackets
and parentheses to title boost the click through rate by up to 38%.
Here are some tips that you can use for brackets and parentheses.

• (FAST)

• (CASE STUDY)

• [NEW RESEARCH]

• (ACTIONABLE)

• (TRUE STORY)

8. Ranked In Suggested Video

YouTube SEO is more than just ranking in the search results.
Infact, you can get just as many views if not more by getting your video
to be appearing as a suggestive video. Suggestive video is when your
video appears next to another video in the side bar. So, if you can get
your video to show up next to really popular video you can steal some
of their views. And the best way to show up as a suggestive video, you use
the same tag that video uses. When YouTube sees some of your tags match
the tags from a popular video they understand that your video is about
the same topic. Which mean they likely rank your video as a suggestive
video. First checkout the tags that popular video uses.
To see a video tags you need to look at the source code of the page.
To do this with Google chrome just right click on the page and click
view page source. Then look at the keyword section of the page.
The keywords that appear here are the tags for that video. You can also
use tools like TUBE BUDDY, vidIQ which will show you video tags without
needing looking source code. Then use few of the tags that video uses
on your video as your tags. And make sure to copy the tags exactly WORD for WORD.
If your video is high quality and closely relative to the popular
video YouTube will start to rank you as a suggestive video.

9. Turn Donkeys in to Unicorns

The fact is this. Whether you are a small channel or have
millions of subscribers, we all have videos that do better than others.
Why is that? There are lots of reasons behind this. But, there is
one common reason and that is lots of watch time. We talked about
watch time before. It is the total amount of time people spend
watching your video. And resonantly discover a great way to increase
watch time. First log in to your YouTube and click on ADUIENCE RETENTION.
This report will show you how much of video people watch and whether
they tend to drop off. Then search for the video that you published
on channel that’s done really well. Finally keep an eye for audience
retention peak. Peaks are section of videos that have above average on its retention.
Then just watch that section of the video to figure out what catch
people for watching that part.
Take the note of any special features, it may be change of camera angel,
say something funny, or may be put some graphic on the video. Even it is simple,
take a note of that. Then apply what you learned for your future videos.
Finally there is a cool little trick. That is including the current year
in your video title. Since lot of people search keyword + year in
Google and YouTube, you have more chance to rank and get more clicks to your video.
So, use those tips to rank your video in YouTube.

Kate Hegins

Kate is the marketing developer of My Cheap Web Design. An Affordable website design company in Vancouver, Canada. We design and develop all types of business websites including affordable eCommerce websites.

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